In preparation for a world which may see US
Army General David Petraeus (soon to be retired) as Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), one should be consulting the Irregular Warfare: Countering
Irregular Threats, Joint Operating Concept of May 2010. The development of that Joint Operating Concept was
overseen by Admiral Eric Olson, USN, Special Operations Commander, USSOCOM; and
General James Mattis, USMC, now Commander of Central Command, CENTCOM.

It is important
to recall that USSOCOM's Area of Operation is quite literally the entire planet,
and that they are not wedded to any particular command other than their own.

The findings of
that document resulted in the September 2010 Joint Operating Irregular Warfare Directive. That Directive, from
then CENTCOM Commander Petraeus, drew directly on the work of Olson and Mattis,
of course, and was concerned primarily with organizational matters involving
cross-command issues, interagency cooperation, funding, and a host of other items
related to clandestine and not so clandestine operations, and support of them. Given
CENTCOM's geographic responsibilities, it all made sense.

The work of Olson
and Mattis, and the subsequent Petraeus Directive, followed the outlines of the
Whole of
Government, Whole of Society approach to irregular warfare exemplified
by the US State Department's 2009 US
Government Interagency Counterinsurgency Guide. That document (cited by
Olson and Mattis) was approved by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former USAID head Henrietta Fore. Five
other departments of the US government were involved to include the Department
of Agriculture. The State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs
oversaw construction of the guide.

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The Whole of Government, Whole of Society
approach to today's wars has its modern genesis in dozens of Executive Branch
directives too numerous to mention, military lessons forgotten and re-learned
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recycled academic thinking sold as -- eureka! -- 21st
Century thought. Academia's most notable contribution in this area was the
development of non-kinetic coercion -- soft power theories. Those would be
delivered to the US civilian-military apparatus from Princeton (Petraeus, PhD),
Harvard/Yale (Montgomery McFate, PhD, JD), and "lesser" members of the US
higher education system.

New organizations have ramped up to
implement the Whole of Government, Whole
of Society approach to war. For example, the Center for Complex Operations (COO)
is now on the scene. COO describes its mission as:

"The CCO will link U.S. Government education and training
institutions, including related centers of excellence, lessons learned
programs, and academia, to foster unity of effort in stability operations,
counterinsurgency, and irregular warfare -- collectively called 'complex
operations.' The Department of Defense, with support from the State Department
and USAID, established the Center for Complex Operations (CCO) as an innovative
interagency partnership. Recognizing that unity of effort across disparate
government agencies, and across DOD components, requires shared intellectual
and decision-making frameworks, the CCO will connect education and training
programs across the government to foster a 'whole of government' understanding,
assessment and approach to complex operations."

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In
short, let's get everyone involved.

There
is not an iota of conspiracy in this US government approach to developing Whole of Government, Whole of Society
dictums, doctrines, etc. The allegedly super-secret Killer Directive signed by
Petraeus, and reported by the New York Times , was nothing of the sort. Barring
any unusual operational or tactical statements within it like "We operate with
Israel in Sudan," it is not hard to figure out what is involved in Foreign
Internal Defense Operations; Kill-Capture-Pacify Operations; or Stability
Operations. It's a bit of a takeoff on the US Marines "Three Block War" concept,
but these days it's more like the "Three Continent War" notion.

There
is a worry though.

The
bottom line is that the Department of Defense is the only institution in the US
government that has the funding to make Joint Civil-Military Operations
involving Whole of Government, Whole of
Society a reality. That is an enormous undertaking requiring the
marshalling, integration and deployment of the US instruments of national power,
mostly on the quiet.

And
that means that military dollars will overshadow and even drive civilian
priorities.

It
really does not matter who ends up as CIA Director. The CIA has become a subset
of the Pentagon, just like the US Department of State. Makes sense, one
supposes, to have someone from the US military running the CIA. Perhaps it'll
be renamed CIACOM for Petraeus' sake.

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As
one military commander said to a civilian counterpart, "Vision without Funding
is Hallucination." Civilians in the USA are doing a lot of hallucinating these
days.

Below are a few excerpts from the Olson, Mattis document quoted
directly from the document...